Gideon carries the unconscious Harrow back from the hidden lower facility to their rooms and puts Harrow on the bed. Harrow looks badly spent, with dried blood around her nose, cracked paint, torn lips, and a bruise, but when Gideon tries to help her drink, Harrow threatens to kill Gideon if touched again.

Gideon confronts Harrow for disappearing, keeping secrets, and making Gideon look useless as a cavalier. Harrow initially insists Gideon should not have interfered and says she had only fainted while recuperating, but Gideon reveals she has taken back the key ring, forcing Harrow to engage with her.

Harrow explains that Teacher’s warning about locked doors was a clue. She has been mapping Canaan House, counting 775 doors and identifying only six locked ones. After asking Teacher for permission, Harrow gained access to the lower hatch, while another locked door was withheld because Teacher said it did not belong to him.

Harrow shows Gideon her maps of the ancient lower facility, which appears older than the rest of Canaan House and may be pre-Resurrection or imitating that era. Harrow believes the rooms contain preserved necromantic tests or challenges left behind by previous users, and she has already lost 163 skeletons to a construct she cannot yet perceive or counter.

Gideon recognizes a horned skull symbol in Harrow’s notes and connects it to a hidden hallway and locked black stone door she previously found behind a tapestry near the cavalier’s dais. Harrow marks it as a new locked door, X-203, and realizes the discovery may support her developing theory.

Gideon then argues that Harrow cannot keep risking death alone, because Gideon needs Harrow alive in order to win freedom and Harrow needs a functioning cavalier to become a Lyctor. Harrow reluctantly agrees to take Gideon into the facility, then reveals that Teacher described the place below as profoundly haunted and potentially deadly, which only hardens Gideon’s resolve.